A Scalable Secret Image Sharing Method Based on Discrete Wavelet Transform

• Published in: Bio-Inspired Computational Intelligence and Applications Vol. 4688; pp. 736 - 745
• Main Authors: Kong, Jun, Zhang, Yanfen, Meng, Xiangbo, Zheng, Ying, Lu, Yinghua
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Germany Springer Berlin / Heidelberg 2007; Springer Berlin Heidelberg
• Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Subjects: Cover Image; Discrete Wavelet Transform; Secret Image; Stego Image; Wavelet Coefficient
• ISBN: 3540747680; 9783540747680
• ISSN: 0302-9743; 1611-3349
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-74769-7_78

This paper presents a scalable secure scheme for sharing and hiding secret image. The given secret image is firstly divided into numerous non-overlapping blocks, and then transformed each block into wavelet frequency by one-level discrete wavelet transform. Second, quantization the wavelet coefficients into 256 gray level. Third, a bit-plane scanning method rearranges the gray value information of the quantized image. Four, share the rearranged image into n shadows by using multiple thresholds. Five, conceal each shadow image in R, G and B channels of the cover image, which doesn’t attract Attracters’ attention. Six, the more shadows the better quality of the retrieved secret image. The experimental results show that the retrieved secret image presents higher visual quality and the stego-images present better invisibility than traditional methods.